


Visceral

by Princex_N



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Asexual Derek, Brainweird, Delusions, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Nogitsune Trauma, Paranoia, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Self-Harm, Vomiting, Wolf Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-07 17:20:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4271553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has a lot of secrets. </p><p>He's generally comfortable keeping secrets, he doesn't have a problem with them, but there are some that he keeps close to his chest, and he can feel them rotting away at his ribs and his lungs, eating through his chest and up into his throat. </p><p>One stands strong in the hollow of his clavicle, its hands steady on his throat and he chokes and gags on it throughout the day and deep into the night. It tears at his muscles and leaves him trembling and spasming, and only barely holding on to the edge of functioning.</p><div class="center">
  <p>---------------</p>
</div>A fic where Stiles was mentally ill prior to the events of the show.
            </blockquote>





	Visceral

**Author's Note:**

> Did i rewatch all of season three, and four, and start watching five? Yes. Yes I did. And TBH I don't know how it makes me feel.  
> 

Stiles has a lot of secrets. 

This is kind of taken as general public knowledge, most people look at Stiles and automatically can tell that he's the kind of person that keeps secrets, and that's because he is. 

But there are some secrets that Stiles has that he hates. 

He's generally comfortable keeping secrets, he doesn't have a problem with them, but there are some that he keeps close to his chest, and he can feel them rotting away at his ribs and his lungs, eating through his chest and up into his throat. 

They are bad secrets, and that's why Stiles keeps them. 

One stands strong in the hollow of his clavicle, its hands steady on his throat and he chokes and gags on it throughout the day and deep into the night. It tears at his muscles and leaves him trembling and spasming, and only barely holding on to the edge of functioning. 

Very bad secrets. 

So Stiles bids his father good night, and he goes upstairs to go to bed, and he closes his door, leans against it, and sighs. 

He's so goddamn tired. 

But he's not going to sleep. 

Instead, he locks the door, and then checks to make sure that it's actually locked. Next is the windows, he never unlocks them and leaves them unlocked, but he checks every single night, even when he hadn't opened the window that day. He checks to make sure that it's locked, unlocks it, and then locks it again, and then checks it again. 

As he looks out at the dark street through the window, he can feel a trickle of sheer terror sliding down the back of his throat and into his chest, grabbing at him. 

He puts a hand on his chest to make sure that there's nothing there, and then hurriedly looks away from the window before he can chance seeing anything. 

Seeing something would be bad. Somehow. He's not sure, because he's always figured that he'd rather be able to see something coming, but at the same time, he feels like actually seeing them would be bad. If he sees them, they can see him. Bad bad bad. 

He looks away from the window, and keeps his eyes angled away while he closes the blinds, and reminds himself again that he should invest in actual curtains. 

He turns to his room and draws in a shaky breath. It's not good enough, but at the same time, it's never going to be actually good enough. 

He forces himself towards the closet, and yanks it open, choking down panic while his heartbeat ratchets up and he can't breathe through the anxiety that clamps around his chest. He glances around inside while he tries to get a handle on his breathing, kicking aside whatever mess gathered there, to make sure that it's actually empty. 

Then he closes the door and tests to make sure it's shut all the way. Pushes a chair in front of it, just in case. 

He leaves the ceiling lights on, turns on a lamp, and then finally manages to force himself into bed. 

Then he reaches over and turns on music on his phone, because they don't like noise. 

That's Stiles' big secret. 

There are monsters after him. 

And the thing is, the thing  _was_ , the thing was that they aren't real. 

But it's hard to convince yourself that they're not real when you know that some of them are. 

It's not really like it was any easier to convince himself that they weren't real even before Scott turned into a Real Life™ Werewolf and Stiles had proof that there were real monsters in the real world, but now it's even harder. 

Because it's not really a delusion when there are real monsters, and it's not really paranoia if they really are out to get you. 

Stiles is aware that there's probably a distinction between the actual monsters and the monsters from the delusion that he's been having since eighth grade. But the thing is that, does it really matter anymore? Some of the monsters are real, the werewolves are real, the kanimas are real, the witches are real, the werecoyotes are real, the kitsunes are real,

the nogitsunes are real. 

And historically speaking, they are generally after Stiles and his friends, and so the way he sees it, it doesn't actually hurt to make an effort to protect himself.  _  
_

Like, he's not really sleeping, but no one knows that and Stiles hasn't seen any significant impact on his life, and so it's not something that he's willing to stop at this point. 

Paranoia and mental illness is a way of life, and Stiles has accepted it as part of his.

But, he thinks, six hours later at 5 in the morning, eyes burning and heavy as they rake over his room one more time, it doesn't make it any easier. 

Lying about it, at least, is easy. 

Ever since it occurred to Stiles that the monsters were a delusion, and a sign of a mental health issue, Stiles has been lying about it. He didn't ever want his father to look at him and see his mother, and now that it's already happened, he knows for sure that he never ever wants to see it again. 

So he lies and keeps it to himself and lets the panic tear him apart from the inside. 

-

Stiles doesn't tell anyone that sometimes he thinks he isn't human either.

He keeps it firmly to himself and he knows that if he tells anyone this that they will looked panicked and not understand. Stiles does not mean the Nogitsune, the thing that tore through his life and left him more broken than before. He doesn't mean the feeling of panicked hopelessness the thing brought when it locked him inside his own head. 

He does not mean when he saw through its eyes and saw himself.

He doesn't meant that at all.

It's just that he kind of does.  

He kind of does mean that he sometimes he thinks that he has claws and that he wants to tear into flesh. Most of the time it's his own. As if he could claw through his skin and find what he used to be. What he's supposed to be. 

He doesn't know what that is. 

But he keeps it to himself. 

Hides the spasms that wrack his body and has body parts pulling in almost painful ways. He hides the impulse to rip through his body, tear the flesh off of his bones. He hides the thoughts that make him want to vomit blood, that tell him that he shouldn't be eating human food, that tell him that his voice is not right, that tell him that he is different, that he is something better. 

He tells himself that he is wrong, and that monsters don't exist. 

Except they kind of do, and he was kind of one for a while. 

He's starting to run out of things to tell himself. 

-

Sometimes, when the impulses get too strong, there's the scissors his mom left behind. 

He doesn't use them often. He doesn't necessarily like the way it feels (except that he kind of does). And if he uses it too often, then it gets harder to explain away the smell of blood. 

Something tells him that that's how he's supposed to smell, but he ignores it.

His hips are littered with pale white lines that mark out the past, he rakes a blade over the skin and makes a new line, bright red with blood that wells up around the wound and drips down his leg. 

Tells himself that he doesn't really like the way it looks.

He thinks of the hospital. Of blood splattered up and down the walls from the people that he ("the nogitsune" Scott's voice reminds him) that  _he_  killed, and he feels sick. 

Feels ill straight down to his core, and his fingers spasm and shake so that he drops the scissors, the golden metal clatters against the bathroom tiles and nausea rises up in Stiles' throat. Even so close, he barely makes it to the toilet before he is emptying his stomach into it, gagging on the severity of his own sins and the guilt of actions that weren't his own, but they  _were_ and he is vomiting again. He retches as tears pour down his face, someone knocks on the door and asks if he is okay and all Stiles can do is scream scream scream. 

He's not sure if he was ever okay to begin with. 

-

It's after Stiles has finished vomiting, and has clambered weakly into the shower, and is lying on the floor under burning hot water, that he wonders who was at the door. 

His dad has been working a lot lately (Stiles can't shake the thought that he's trying to get away from him. Stiles doesn't blame him. He can't blame him at all.), his dad isn't home. 

So who was knocking on the door? 

Stiles doesn't know and as he ponders the question, he finds that he doesn't care too much, he just lets his head fall back against the linoleum floor of the shower and lets scalding water pour over him and soak into the clothes he hadn't quite taken off and wash away the bile that splattered on his face and the blood that dripped down his leg. 

The burning water fades to hot to warm to lukewarm to cold. The cold bites into his skin until he gathers the will to turn it off and stand up. 

He shucks the sopping wet shirt and underwear and leaves them in the shower, he takes the scissors and stows them back under the sink, and pulls on dry clothes and hesitantly looks to see if the person knocking is still there. 

He opens the door to find none other than a wolf pressed up against the door. When Stiles pushes the door open, it slides with it on the hardwood floor before standing up and looking disgruntled. 

Stiles blinks at it and wonders if maybe he's finally moved on to hallucinating (or maybe the nogitsune is back" whispers a part of Stiles' brain. He finds that he can't argue against the theory.)

"What the fuck?" he says aloud, and winces at how hoarse his voice sounds, how there's a high pitched note of panic that cracks his words straight down the middle as he stares wide eyed at the huge black wolf standing at his feet. Then he notices the discarded pile of clothes next to it and gets more confused than ever. "What the fuck??" 

The wolf, predictably, offers no answer. It noses at his palm and then jumps onto its back feet, and holy  _hell_ it's taller than Stiles is, and it noses around his face and throat, sniffing until Stiles steps back and it falls back on all fours. 

"Who the hell..." Stiles tries hard to come up with an answer as to who this could possibly be, "Derek??" The wolf... nods. 

"Are you... is this real?" Stiles asks, biting back hysteria, and the wolf nods again, pressing its, his?, paws on top of Stiles' feet as Stiles counts his fingers (he's not sure how much that helps. He doesn't know, he's too afraid to verify that his version of everything that happened matches up with everyone else's. He doesn't know which parts were real and which parts were him, and he isn't sure that he wants to know.) 

"Why are you here?" Derek rolls onto his back, which Stiles takes to be the canine equivalent of a shrug, and since he can't exactly push for answers at the moment, he lets it go.

Stiles nods a little dazedly, trying to figure out what exactly is going on, and he finds that thinking it over seems to be making it worse, and so he stops and tries to redirect his thoughts onto something less confusing. 

So he just pushes past Derek and goes downstairs, which is probably rude, but Stiles can examine his manners at a more convenient time, which is not right now. Derek follows him, padding a few steps behind, and Stiles can hear the clicking of his nails against the floor and it echoes through the empty house. Stiles alternates between panicked at the presence and comforted by it. This is how it usually is. 

He walks into the kitchen, and tries not to think too hard on the knives in the drawer as he gets himself a glass of water. The shower gave him the opportunity to rinse the taste of vomit from his mouth, but he ends up spitting the first few mouthfuls out anyway. Just because he feels like he should. 

Stiles stares at Derek and realizes that he has absolutely no idea what the hell he's supposed to be doing in this situation. What is he supposed to do with a man turned wolf? Stiles isn't even really sure how to act around dogs. Much less a werewolf in wolf form. Is he supposed to be treating Derek like a person or like a wolf? There are a surprising number of technicalities about this form that Stiles wouldn't have thought about. 

"Are you thirsty or something?" Stiles asks, suddenly feeling like an asshole for drinking water without offering any, although he's not really sure how he would give him the water anyway. In a bowl? Would that be rude?

He thankfully, doesn't have to find out, because Derek shakes his head. Stiles bites down on his lip, stopping just before breaking skin, and then goes to sit on the couch, turning on the tv even though he doesn't really watch it, because the silence makes him nervous even though the sun is still out. There are supposed to be rules, but sometimes they break them. 

If they can break them, then it makes sense that Stiles should be able to. But he can't. Even thinking about it makes him a little nervous, as Derek is sitting down, Stiles gets up to check the door lock, jostling the doorknob a bit, then unlocking and locking the door. He comes back to the sofa a little sheepishly, but Derek appears unbothered and it's not like he's going to say anything about it anyway. So whatever. 

Stiles sits on the sofa, and Derek shifts restlessly on the couch, like he can’t find a comfortable position. And Stiles pretends not to notice as he gives up and begins to creep towards Stiles in tiny increments. Stiles pretends to be watching the TV and acts as if Derek shoving his head in Stiles’ lap and Stiles burying his fingers in Derek’s fur are completely normal. It’s unexpentantly comforting, but then, things with Derek have always been a little unexpected.

-

Derek doesn’t end up leaving.

It’s not so much that Stiles minds, it’s just that if Derek stays here, if he stays with Stiles (because he sure as hell isn’t here for Stiles’ dad, although his dad hadn’t been surprised to see his son cuddling on the couch with a wolf almost twice his size), then he’s going to find out.

If he stays with Stiles, then Stiles won’t be able to keep his secret.

But the thing is, that Stiles doesn’t really want Derek to leave. Because Derek was there and Derek was with Stiles, and Stiles realized once his dad came home, that he hadn’t looked over his shoulder in a panic even once. The thoughts of the monsters still lurked at the edges of Stiles’ mind, but with Derek here, he’s not as panicked about protecting himself.

So he doesn’t want Derek to leave, but he doesn’t want Derek to find out.

Stiles doesn’t know what to do about it.

He’s almost hoping, that his dad will make Derek stay downstairs, or make him leave, but he doesn’t. Stiles says that he’s going to bed and his dad gives him a hug and then bids him and Derek goodnight, and so up the stairs they go together.

Derek immediately jumps onto the bed, completely unashamed. Stiles, meanwhile, gets stuck at the door, anxiously locking and unlocking it for want of something better to do while he tries to figure out a course of action.

Finally, he turns around and acts like his face isn’t flushed and pretends like his nails aren’t digging into the skin on his neck.

“Hey, so I have some, it’s like a ritual? And I do it every night and I can’t really sleep without doing it, and so, could you like… keep it to yourself?”

Derek makes a weird full body motion that seems to convey the concept that he isn’t doing a lot of speaking in his current form, which Stiles takes as a yes.

So he pretends like he’s totally comfortable doing this in front of another person. He checks the door lock again, checks the window, fiddles with the locks, feels the familiar spark of panic when confronted with looking out the window (he sees Derek’s ear perk up when it does, which makes it worse), closes the blinds.

Closes the closet door, opens it, makes sure it’s empty, closes it, pushes the chair in front of it. Turns on the lamp, gets into bed without turning the lights off.

Derek looks a little skeptical of this, but doesn’t make any comments or do anything on his own. Just watches Stiles fiddle with his phone a bit before turning on the music box playlist.

“Does this, uh, does this bother you?” Stiles asks, as if it’s something that he’ll have no problem rectifying and like it won’t send him into a spiraling panic if the lights are off or if the music is off. As if he could break the rules no problem.

But Derek shakes his head, nestling around on top of the blankets until he’s pressed against Stiles’ side.

He does look upset when it becomes clear that Stiles has no intention of lying down and going to sleep. It starts off with him watching Stiles play around on his phone for a while, and then turns into him pawing at Stiles’ leg, as if he has simply forgotten that he’s in bed and supposed to be sleeping.

Stiles ignores all of these things with relative ease.

This only seems to irritate him more.

“Look,” Stiles finally blurts out after an hour of being pestered, “I don’t… I can’t sleep, anymore. Not really? Okay? I can’t sleep when it’s dark outside, that’s when… that’s.. it’s dark outside. So I can’t. I can’t do it.”

Derek does some shuffling around that Stiles doesn’t understand at all until he hears the sickening sound of bones cracking and Derek is shifting back into human.

“Holy fuck that’s digusting.” Stiles cries, covering his ears with his palms, pressing down until it’s clear that the transformation is complete. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“That’s not the point.” Derek says, as if him being naked in Stiles’ bed isn’t a big deal at all. “Why aren’t you sleeping? Is this a common thing?”

“No.” Stiles says, knowing full well that Derek can hear that he’s lying in the vague hopes that Derek understands that he doesn’t want to talk about it, and yet.

“Why don’t you sleep?” Derek demands.

Stiles lets out an exasperated sigh, “Look, it’s just a thing! I take naps during the day, and it’s fine. I don’t need to sleep at night. I don’t sleep at night. I can’t do it. Leave it.”

Derek growls, but he’s listening to the way Stiles’ heart is leaping and stuttering all over the place, and he lets it go for now. Plus, he’s starting to get uncomfortable not in wolf form, and he quickly shifts back and pointedly ignores the weird choked sound that Stiles makes when he does so.

Stiles tries not to think of the sound that Kira’s head made when it cracked against the side of the table in Deaton’s office. He shudders and gags a little, and hopes that Derek doesn’t notice.

-

Stiles asks why Derek is here, and doesn’t get an answer. The wolf refuses to shift into a form where he’s capable of human speech, and Stiles gets tired of pushing eventually, and stops asking.

Derek doesn’t do much, just follows Stiles around the house and does what Stiles is doing if he wants to. Otherwise, he’s just there. Stiles tries not to pay too much attention to him, but it’s a little difficult, because he’s a fucking behemoth.

Stiles feels watched.

Not necessarily always in a good way.

Sometimes, it’s comforting. In a way, he feels like he doesn’t have to watch his back as intently, doesn’t have to expend so much energy making sure that there’s nothing there, because Derek is there, and that makes it easier.

But at the same time, Derek is always watching Stiles. He sees when Stiles rakes his fingernails up his arms, and notices when Stiles flinches because he almost could have sworn that there was something making noise (The metallic clang of a bear trap snapping shut around legs, tearing skin and breaking bones. The rasping breath of the Nogitsune, burned to death in its last form. He wonders, if it gets out again, will it take his form to whatever poor bastard is possessed?) He sees that Stiles doesn’t sleep, that he can’t make himself walk into dark rooms, that if the house is too quiet he starts to get panicked, that sometimes he can’t keep food down, and he notices when Stiles loses himself in his thoughts and sits for minutes shock still, barely blinking.

Stiles notices that he’s noticing and he can’t shake the feeling that if anyone could put two and two together, it would be Derek.

He feels nauseated, again. Nausea is basically Stiles’ base state at this point, there are so many things that make him sick. Anxiety, panic, guilt. Guilt is a bad one. When Stiles shakes himself out of the weird headspace where things around him aren’t real and he isn’t human, he feels sick to his stomach that even one part of him thinks that he would want to be anything like the Nogitsune. It makes him hate himself, he doesn’t know why this is happening to him, doesn’t know why he has to be like this.

These moments find him curled up in the corner of a locked bathroom, choking back vomit and tears.

Derek waits outside the door and doesn’t ask.

Stiles thinks it’s only a matter of time.

-

Derek pulls Stiles into the bathroom one morning by the corner of his shirt and while Stiles is standing there, bedraggled and confused, Derek hops up onto the sink at nudges the mirror questioningly. 

Or, more appropriately, the sheet covering the mirror. 

Stiles' sleepiness is gone in an instant, and he fidgets uncomfortably and wonders if he could outrun Derek and then figures, probably not. 

"It... it's nothing." Stiles says, and hopes that Derek doesn't call him out on it. He doesn't look impressed, but Stiles isn't going to say anything if Derek isn't going to push the matter. 

Derek decides to push the matter. Because he's a pushy asshole. 

He gets between Stiles and the door and makes it clear that he's not going to move until Stiles spills, because he's not blind and he's not stupid, and you would have to be both to miss that there's something up with Stiles, and he's tired of letting it slide without getting answers. 

Anxiety is making Stiles' heart beat double time, and he knows that there's no way out of this, and he hates it hates it hates it. He didn't want to have to deal with it ever, but especially not now, especially not with no warning. He hates himself and his impulsive actions. 

Fuck. 

"It's nothing." Stiles repeats, "It's nothing I can't handle, okay? Leave it." 

Derek sits down. 

"Fuck, you're a real douchebag you know that?" Stiles snaps, anger temporarily flaring and overtaking the panic, but only for a moment, and Derek tilts his head like he's accepted that a long time ago, and doesn't move an inch. 

"It's, I just got nervous, okay?" Not a lie. He had gotten nervous, at two in the morning when Stiles had been not sleeping he was suddenly overcome with an at least partial certainty that there were cameras. He didn't know where they would be from or when they could have showed up or who could have put them there, but he was positive that he was being watched. And so he had gotten up, found band-aids to put over his computer webcam because he knows that people can hack those, and he had thrown a sheet up over the bathroom mirror because for all he knows, there's a camera in there too. He had put his phone in a drawer because he wasn't sure how to cover up those cameras without it messing with the screen lighting. A quick google search had gotten him browser extensions that would help shake or get rid of anyone looking at what he was doing online, and then the panic had diminished and Stiles curled up entirely under the comforter and pretended like he didn't notice Derek's sleepy grumble of annoyance and tried to ignore the thoughts that said that he still had to find the other cameras. 

Now, the feeling and certainty is gone, and in its place is a vague embarrassment that would have passed since no one knew that the moment had ever happened in the first place, but since Derek wakes up at the asscrack of dawn to use the human bathroom or something, Derek knows about at least some of it, and now Stiles has to answer for something that he's never had to before, and he doesn't actually know how to do that. 

Derek seems to insist that this isn't a good enough answer, but he also seems to be picking up on Stiles' anxiety about the situation that's quickly getting out of hand, and so he moves, but Stiles can tell that he isn't going to drop the matter permanently and that this is only him giving Stiles time to get ready to talk about it. 

But Stiles doesn't want to talk about it. 

So Derek fucks off to sit on the couch because there's not a lot of things for him to do when he's an overgrown dog, and Stiles is full of nervous energy that he doesn't know what to do with and a creeping sensation down his spine and a desperate need to do  _something_ so he goes through the house and checks every single window is shut all the way and locked firmly and that the blinds are closed. Once he's done with that he goes through and closes all the doors and locks the front and back door, and then weighs the benefits of putting a bar in the sliding glass door to make sure that it really doesn't open and then ultimately decides that if something was that desperate to get in it could just break the glass and so he just closes the blinds as far as he can and acts like that's good enough for him. 

Then he goes to sit next to Derek. 

"Look," he says, "I'll tell you what's going on with me if you shift and tell me why you've been living in my house as a wolf for," he hesitates, "however long it's been." 

Time is hard. 

Derek narrows his eyes, and his lip curls back to flash his fangs before he gets his expression under control and it's gone. He gets up and disappears up the stairs, and Stiles wonders briefly if this means that Derek doesn't want to talk and isn't going to force Stiles to, and he allows himself to hope for a moment and then Derek storms downstairs in a tshirt and a pair of gym shorts that belong to Stiles and he sits down and glares at the carpet. 

"Everything happens in this body," he says, voice hoarse and a little growly, "And I look at myself, and I think about it. And I'm tired of thinking about it for longer than I have to, and so I'm trying to stay out of it. And I can't be the wolf anywhere else  _but_ here, because I don't have a place to live and wolves don't go grocery shopping." 

Stiles thinks of Kate raping 15 year old Derek and burning his house down, he thinks of Jennifer using a magic roofie to gain Derek's trust and get him to fuck her, he thinks of Kali and the twins using Derek's claws to eviscerate Boyd, and he thinks that that isn't all that unreasonable.  

But while that might not be unreasonable, Derek's persistence in this matter is and so Stiles acts like he doesn't notice when Derek starts looking at him expectantly and he knwos that after getting that information, he's not going to be able to back out which sucks. Because he had been putting his faith in Derek's secrecy and inability to express emotions to get him out of this, and Derek decided that today was the day to suddenly change that up. 

"It's just something that's been happening since middle school," Stiles says finally, ignoring the look that Derek gives him that clearly conveys how the werewolf feels about him not getting help for it yet. "Sometimes I... They... I'm fucking delusional." 

And he's finally said it. 

He hates it.

There's none of that bullshit "weight off his chest", it's just a sick feeling of disgust with himself that's somehow worse than usual. 

"I'm fucking delusional. Are you happy?" Stiles snaps, curling in on himself and wrapping his arms around himself as if he could hold his secrets inside and take back what he's already said if he holds tight enough. 

Derek is watching him with a steady gaze that doesn't reveal anything and Stiles wonders what he's thinking. 

"Why haven't you told anyone?" he asks finally and Stiles feels like he's going to throw up. 

"My mom died," he says around rising nausea and a lump in his throat, "she died and when she was dying, she was losing her mind, and when it started I didn't want my dad to think I was turning into her. And I wasn't suicidal, so I kept it to myself." He stops for a moment and then there's a brief flare of anger, "And it's not like this is easy to talk about. To anyone. How do you explain this?" 

"Explain what?" Derek asks, cool as a fucking cucumber. 

"The answer is you can't." Stiles replies, "You can't just tell someone that you're being stalked by monsters. You can't just ask someone, 'hey, so what's the probability of someone installing cameras into the house to surveillance me?'. You can't just ask someone to make sure that there isn't anyone watching me through the windows. You just can't ask that kind of stuff of people. Because then they start to think you're crazy and that you need to be handled with kid gloves and they think that you can't handle anything, but I've been handling this kind of stuff, I can handle everything." 

He's panting a little at the end of the tirade. With anger and anxiety and his secrets in the air like a toxic spill. 

Derek doesn't say anything. 

"You can't tell anyone." Stiles says, his voice a low threatening growl. 

"Why not?" Derek asks, like it's a challenge. 

"Because I need to know what's going on." Stiles says, "You think I haven't thought about this? You tell Scott or any of the pack, and they'll stop keeping me in the loop. THey'll think 'Stiles is already seeing monsters, so facing real ones will make him worse', never mind the fact that these monsters have been around longer than I knew the real ones existed. And if you tell them, then they might stop listening to me, and since I'm the only one who bothers to do any research around here, they cannot doubt what I say, because it could get them killed. And they'll treat me like I'm a kid and like i'm crazy and every time my dad looks at me he'll see my mom, and I can't handle that." 

Derek is quiet for a long time and so eventually Stiles gets up to get water and he spends a couple of minutes in the kitchen trying to calm himself down because the thought of Derek telling someone else feels like it's going to push him into a panic attack. So he drinks the water and counts his breathing and forces back the tears that well in his eyes until he deems himself well enough to go back to the living room. 

He sits back next to Derek and waits for the man to speak, because Stiles has nothing else to say. 

"I won't tell anyone," Derek says finally, and before Stiles can sigh in relief, he continues, "but, you have to ask me for help."

"What?"

"You have to ask for help. I would be able to hear any monsters. I would be able to hear anyone outside the house. I would be able to hear any cameras and I would be able to smell if someone was in the house when they're not supposed to be. And I'm strong enough to protect you from anything you think could be there." Derek explains, "So you have to let me know what's going on so that I can help." 

"What are you? A service dog?" Stiles scoffs while he's trying to process what Derek is saying. 

"If you need me to be," Derek says, as if it's that simple, "then yes." 

"It might not help." Stiles says, "Even when I believe it I mostly know it can't be real, but that doesn't help. So what you're saying makes sense, but it might not help."

"But it might. And even if it doesn't, then at least you'll know that you aren't alone. And that's important."

Stiles sits a moment and is thankful that Derek hasn't tried to tell him that he's stronger than the delusions, that he can think his way out of having them. Or hasn't told him that having insight to his delusions means that he isn't really delusional. Because those are both wrong, and Stiles doesn't want to have to explain how they're wrong. Not on top of all this. 

"Fine," Stiles says slowly, "fine. I'll tell you. But if you're a wolf, how are you supposed to tell me anything?"

"I'll figure it out." In the face of Derek's simple certainty, Stiles feels wild and frayed. But it's grounding in a way, because if Derek can be calm about this situation, then theoretically Stiles can too. 

"Okay," Stiles breathes, "Okay." 

And Derek gets up, presumably to put Stiles' clothes back and shift again. But he stops and turns back and says, "One more thing," and Stiles looks up to face him while Derek leans over to tap Stiles' hip, "Don't hurt yourself anymore. Or I'll tell someone about that." And then he leaves before Stiles can say anything in response. 

-

Derek's knowing and help is not some bullshit cure that gets rid of anything. If anything, the stress of Derek finding out and knowing made everything temporarily worse. 

Stiles is almost asleep that night when he jerks awake at two in the morning desperate to know who's watching him and how they're getting their information. And the longer he sits there, the more certain he is that there is someone getting information on him somehow, it's just that he doesn't know how. And he gets the sudden urge to delete everything he's ever posted on the internet, because maybe they're getting it through that. 

He doesn't wake Derek up because he can't help with this. If they're getting their information through the internet, then Derek won't be able to hear anything so Stiles has to deal with this himself. So he turns on the paranoid browsing extension in two tabs and then starts to look up how to permanently delete social media accounts. And he's getting ready to actually start when his laptop closes on his fingers. 

He looks up to see Derek unhappily looking at him. And Stiles knows that he was looking at what he was doing on the computer, which makes him nervous because if he missed Derek watching him, what else has he missed?

"You wouldn't have been able to help. They're getting their information through the internet, you can't smell that." Stiles explains. 

Derek pushes Stiles' laptop off the bed. It lands flatly on the carpet and Stiles hopes that nothing broke. He still feels watched. 

He's about to lean over and grab his computer again when he's stopped by two things. The first is Derek putting his full weight on Stiles' body and holding him in place. The second is the threat of something being under the bed, waiting.

"There's nothing under the bed, right?" Stiles asks in a shaky whisper, trying desperately and failing to not think of those short horror films he stupidly watched last summer. 

Derek presses the side of his head against the mattress and stiles waits with baited breath and Derek smells the air and then shakes his head decisively and settles his weight back on Stiles' stomach. 

Stiles surrenders himself to this fate and decides that doing anything else will have to wait until morning. He doesn't quite get to sleep, but he manages some kind of light doze and he gets up in the morning grateful that Derek had stopped him because he doesn't  _need_ social media, but he still likes it enough to not delete it all. 

Instead he deletes some posts he thinks say too much, puts his profiles on private, and changes all his passwords. 

At least it's something. 

-

Just because someone knows doesn't mean it gets better. 

The constant haunting fear and paranoia doesn't go away and neither does anything else. Sometimes it gets so bad that Stiles is desperate enough to consider telling someone else, asking for professional help. 

But he doesn't. 

He's still not sure he can. 

Derek is also a constant. 

Stiles doesn't actually know how much he's helping, but he does know that he's sleeping more now. And sleep helps. So by extension, he supposes that Derek is helping. With his werewolf senses and the near constant cuddling. 

It's a weird dynamic because Stiles doesn't quite know what their relationship is, because Derek i a wolf. He wonders what they could be if Derek was in human form, but knowing why he isn't, Stiles can't ask him to shift. Derek works to help Stiles feel safe, and Stiles supposes that this is the best he can do to return the favor. 

Still, he wonders. 

And thinks that maybe they'll work it out together if Derek ever feels better about his human shape again. But that's a lot of trauma to work through, and so Stiles doesn't expect anything anytime son. 

But that's okay because he doesn't know how well he'd cope in a relationship anyway. So maybe it is better that they hold off on anything. UNtil they're both in a better place. 

If Stiles is ever in a better place. 

He resigned himself to never getting better a long time ago. But the thought still makes his future daunting, and sometimes Stiles wonders if he'll ever really have a future to look forward to. 

But he's managed this far. He'll manage further. 

And since Derek is a nosy asshole, Stiles apparently has his help too, despite the fact that he hadn't really wanted it in the first place, it now seems like he's stuck with it. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, and so Stiles isn't necessarily always complaining. It's hard to deal with but sometimes it helps and there's the potential of it turning into something else and so Stiles is willing to put up with it when it annoys him, which sometimes happens a lot. But that's the price he pays to keep his secrets, and since it's Derek, it's not that much of a price at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> The extensions mentioned do exist, [here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/paranoid-browsing/hnfdeaekggfbgjljcfdbfdhffoeopmbe?hl=en-US) and [here](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery/mlomiejdfkolichcflejclcbmpeaniij?hl=en), and you can probably find others if you look around.
> 
> Hey also, Stiles chooses not to get help for a lot of reasons (mainly because this is fiction and I didn't want to write a diagnosis or therapy), but if you're having issues with your mental health, no matter how well you're dealing with them or how small you think they are, you should try to get help. If you're with a good professional, they should never belittle your problems or tell you that you're being ridiculous, and if it turns out to be nothing, then it's nothing, but if it's something then it's good to get help. If you can't get professional help, then there are resources online for you to use!! Please try to get help if you need it, it's very important!!
> 
> [My Tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com) inbox is always open if you want to talk or vent!!


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